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Colors of the Mountain
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price:
$14.95
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$10.17
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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.05092
EAN: 9780385720601
ISBN: 0385720602
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-01-16
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2001-01-16
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Reviews:
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Colors of the Mountain is a classic story of triumph over adversity, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love, and a welcome introduction to an amazing young writer.
Da Chen was born in 1962, in the Year of Great Starvation. Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution engulfed millions of Chinese citizens, and the Red Guard enforced Mao's brutal communist regime. Chen’s family belonged to the despised landlord class, and his father and grandfather were routinely beaten and sent to labor camps, the family of eight left without a breadwinner. Despite this background of poverty and danger, and Da Chen grows up to be resilient, tough, and funny, learning how to defend himself and how to work toward his future. By the final pages, when his says his last goodbyes to his father and boards the bus to Beijing to attend college, Da Chen has become a hopeful man astonishing in his resilience and cheerful strength.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Comment: Colors of the Mountain is very entertaining. Da Chen is very descriptive in his writing which allowed me to really to imagine the scenes. This is the first book I've read by Da Chen but I've definitely become a fan of his writing. I'll be looking into his other books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: amazing
Comment: This book really taught me about what cultural impacts Mao Ze Dong had on the Chinese population. It was an amazing book and I suggest everybody read it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor narrator, unsympathetic author
Comment: This review refers to the abridged audio version of this book --
UGH. I am fascinated with books about China and life under Mao. However, I couldn't get through the first tape of this book, for two reasons.
One was the reader, Daxing Zhang. His stilted, halting and monotone delivery made it unpleasant to listen to. He evidently is not a professional narrator and it shows. Even a great book can be ruined by a poor reader.
And, believe me, this doesn't even come close to being a great book.
The storytelling is dull and self-pitying and the language is, in turns, overblown and cliched.
My biggest problem, however, was the author's attitude. Don't get me wrong: I abhor what Mao and his "cultural revolution" did in China. But it's more than a bit ironic when someone from the upper classes (the author's family were landlords and owned several buildings) complains when their property, power and status is taken away.
The author's stated contempt for farm work, for instance, shows the type of elitist attitude that spurred the revolution in the first place.
Never once (at least in the part of the book I managed to listen to) did Da Chen appear to have any empathy for the working classes that were oppressed under the pre-revolution days.
Again, I must emphasize that I do NOT agree with the goals of or methods used by Mao's Communist regime, but nor can I generate a great deal of sympathy for once-rich whiners who feel, for the first time in their lives, the sting of poverty and disenfranchisement.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Incredibly inspiring
Comment: I read a lot of memoirs precisely for what I received from this book, inspiration. The sentence that galvanized me was this one, "I had been studying an average of fifteen hours a day for the last ten months."
Other reviewers have explained Chen's story, so I won't reiterate it. But I will say that when I think about what this man accomplished in pursuit of his dream, I realize once again how easy it is to excuse our failures as a matter of fate or luck.
Da Chen teaches us otherwise.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The bankruptcy of the Chinese Communist system.
Comment: One wonders why the communist system was swept into the dustbin of history. Da Chen tells you why. Intellectuals were purged in Mao's society and people learned very little. In fact, school was not even required of everyone. Only after Mao joined Lenin in a masoleum did intelligence and ability matter much.
Da Chen relates his early life story about his early Chinese childhood in the rural south of China. He was discriminated against because he was a son of a former landlord. Peasants lorded it over him and his family. Da Chen relates his experiences of the Cultural Revolution and how the school system was devastated by the purges and reeducation.
Da Chen escaped this poverty by using his intelligence to shine in the reform education system after Mao's death. He received a state education in English and went on to emigrate to New York. A nice rages to riches story and the tyranny of the Communist system.
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